3x2 The sort of do-it-yourself dreadful affair

I'm continuing to rewatch every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review contains spoilers.

Since the show started developing the idea of THRUSH as an organisation of crime, it's had an awareness that THRUSH is literally a corporation, with all the concerns a corporation has. The plot of The Arabian Affair is about a THRUSH agent due to cash is on his retirement plan, for example. THRUSH isn't just a loose collection of baddies being evil for evil's sake, but an organisation of wealthy men looking to increase their own advantage in life at the expense of others, which of course requires paid employees who are, at the end of the day, just looking for steady employment. It's almost like it's a critique of capitalism and the effect it has on any group of humans, and I've been finding this a notably mature insight for a TV show. This episode explores THRUSH as a corporate entity even further.

In the teaser, Napoleon Solo is breaking into a warehouse to retrieve some THRUSH financial records. After breaking open the safe with some pretty cool spy gadgets (making this feel like an actual spy show for the first time in a long time), he's attacked by a woman. She's slow, but abnormally strong. She bends bars and lifts gates, rips a drain pipe off the side of a building, and is relentless in her pursuit. Napoleon Solo shoots her several times, doesn't even slow her down. Is she a zombie? Is she a robot? Is she a hypnotized girl from Partridge Preparatory School? Whatever she is, it looks bad for Solo until we merifully cut to the title sequence.

Banks and loans

In Waverly's office, Napoleon Solo (not dead) and Ilya Kuryakin learn that UNCLE has managed to attain the THRUSH financial records through other means after Solo's failed attempt. Seems weird that he went to all that trouble, but that's what the show goes with (he's obviously still alive, why not just say he got the records?) Even with a billion dollars in the bank (and that's 1960s money!), it seems that THRUSH is applying to a Swiss bank for a billion dollar loan. Ilya Kuryakin is to pose as the Swiss loan officer and infiltrate THRUSH's operation. Napoleon Solo is to take a mandatory holiday, because nobody believes that he was attacked and foiled by a mere woman.

On the way to the airport, however, Solo and Kuryakin encounter the woman again, and she tries to kill them. She'd have gotten away with it too, but for no apparent reason she suddenly collapses. Andy, a bikini model in a nearby photo shoot, recognizes the woman and signs on to be this episode's guest star (Jeannine Riley).

They take the would-be killer in to UNCLE headquarters, where a doctor tells them that she's not human. And yet neither is she a robot. She's a composite of the two, with two-thirds of a brain combined with plastics and additional organic material, imprinted with circuits and combined with transisters and so on. Andy insists that the woman used to be her roommate until she disappeared months ago, leaving her with unpaid rent and a huge phone bill.

Re-assignments are delivered. Ilya and Andy are to go investigate the woman's disappearance, and Napoleon Solo is to pose as the bank loan officer.

Mad scientists and super-villains

Ilya Kuryakin and Andy learn that the woman had been hit by a truck, and her body apparently got intercepted by THRUSH. Napoleon Solo learns that THRUSH wants a business loan so they can manufacture human-robot composites. The scientist behind it all has no idea what THRUSH is, and believes he's just working for an up-and-coming tech firm. He has no idea that his boss is secretly a wealthy right-wing businessman with dreams of dictatorship. The scientist needed money for research and development, and THRUSH had the money. It's an easy and not uncommon mistake to make, back in the 1960s and, it seems, in the 2020s.

The third act is mostly a fight scene that gets a little boring, but the army of cyborgs is unleashed within the THRUSH facility and team UNCLE must run the gauntlet and also find the master switch to destroy them all. It's never explained how the body of a single roommate gets turned into 10 or more cyborgs, so I feel that the science is a little confused. It was clearly explained in the second act that THRUSH took the dead body of Andy's roommate and loaded it up enough machinery to make it programmable, but left enough organic material to make it appear human. But the third act has a bunch of the same woman in the same shot, suggesting that the roommate served only as a template. Did the scientist manufacture new humans? Are these other dead women gathered from around the city, but with their faces modified to look like the roommate? Why are they all dressed the same? It's very confusing, and it's a little bit of a disappointment at the end of such an otherwise intriguing premise.

DIY dreadful

This episode was pretty good, mostly. The teaser was not shot to be exciting, and the third act was dull, and the story lost some clarity around its own premise. There's a lot of corny delivery in this episode, both in terms of individual lines and the overall tone, but I think that's where we are in the lifecycle of this show. I guess it must have been grasping to fit into the TV line-up, and this must have been what people wanted. It must have worked, because there are 30 episodes in this season and it's not the final season.

As the end credits rolled, I was pleased to discover that the script had been written by Harlan Ellison. That amply explains the good parts. The less good parts may have been some missteps in writing (it happens to the best) or maybe down to the producers. As an episode about THRUSH as a corporation and how it finances its evil plans, it's well worth watching.